The G&T programs aim to provide extra services for students with high aptitude who could get bored in regular classroom settings. Some describe it as a form of special education. Parents must sign up their children for tests to get into the program by November, and children are tested in January and February. Competition is stiff: There are five programs that admit the top students from across the city, and, in practice, only students who score in the 99th percentile, or those who have siblings already enrolled, have a shot at a seat. Most local districts within the city have their own programs, and children are eligible if they score in the 90th percentile or above.

I heard that 11% of children were in the top 99th percentile. How is that possible?

Two things: First, that statistic refers to 11% of kindergarten test-takers. Only 13,600 incoming kindergarteners took the tests, which represents less than 20% of the kindergartners in the city. So the 1,500 incoming kindergartners who scored in the 99th percentile really represent about 2% of the city’s kindergarteners. Second, the city compares students’ scores against a national sample of children who took each test. Parents and experts interviewed by the Journal, however, have raised concerns about how those calculations were done.

Why don’t children with perfect scores automatically get into citywide programs?

It’s hard to measure giftedness in a 4-year-old, but the tests try to do so based on a national idea of what it means to be “gifted.” The city doesn’t provide enough seats in gifted-and-talented programs to accommodate all students who score well enough on the tests to be labeled gifted. To allow for some nuance in the tests, the city holds a lottery for entry into citywide programs for students who score in the top percentile, even though students within that percentile have received different scores.

How many spots are there in district gifted and talented programs?

It’s unclear. A Department of Education spokesman said there were 3,403 offers made in 2011-12 for incoming kindergartners. The department hasn’t responded to repeated requests from the Journal for the number of seats in district programs or the number of seats in the citywide program outside of kindergarten. There are about 300 kindergarten seats in the citywide programs open this year.

Why can’t the city open up more spots?

An education department spokesman said it is a space issue. Creating more space in buildings for gifted programs would force the department to shuffle students in other schools, spokesman Devon Puglia said. The space and real estate issue is one of the toughest the department faces as it opens and closes schools each year, and tries to keep track of geographic population changes.

Additionally, a department spokesman said the city had doubled the number of offers made to 3,403 kindergarten offers in the 2011-12 school year, from 1,282 in 2007-08.

Why does the city use standardized tests? Isn’t it hard to test a 4-year-old?

Adina Lopatin, a deputy chief academic officer at the city, said one of the reasons for using a lottery was to take a little bit of emphasis off of the tests and allow for some nuance in the results. The Department of Education switched to a standardized admissions process across the city in 2008 that relied solely on tests, instead of, for example, teacher recommendations. Previously, the admissions process had been criticized as too haphazard, with each district making its own rules. One of the criticisms of the program made by some gifted and talented experts is that children’s abilities can change dramatically as they grow older, but there are very few opportunities to enter the program after kindergarten.

Why doesn’t the city test all students for the program?

City officials have said that it would cost too much and detract resources from other educational efforts to test every student.

Does that affect who gets into the program?

Some gifted and talented experts have criticized the city for relying on tests and refusing to test every student, believing that this discriminates against students who come from less advantaged backgrounds. It is true that the program is disproportionately filled with white and Asian students; about two-thirds are white and Asian, compared with one-third of the general population. City officials have said that they do significant outreach efforts to lower income and minority communities, but do not track the race of students applying for the program.